18set2012

The aging powerlifting belt – a retirement plan for athletes!

I think I just had a great idea. I think I will start a business of aging powerlifting belts. Consider this: everybody knows an old and very well used belt is a good belt. Probably it is at its best when it’s really really old. Old, all stained with too much sweat and maybe a little blood, if you’re lucky.

So, in economic terms, powerlifting belts should be seen as whiskey: the older the better. Unlike whiskey, though, you can’t just leave it there to age: you must use it intensely. Otherwise, the leather won’t get that rubbery indescribable texture a very old and used belt has.

If other members of the community follow my fantastic idea, we can even standardize aging categories: there’s the 8 year belt, the 12 year belt and – wow! – even the 20 year belt (I wonder who’ll last that long).

But how do we produce such belts? That’s a tough one. How do you produce a good, old, stained, aged belt without exclusivity? If you grow so emotionally attached to it that you become monogamous, it won’t make either economic nor personal sense to sell it – ever. So you must buy TODAY a set of new belts and use one in each set.

You can also cheat, of course: you can use them in a sauna or do cardio with them. I believe it will work, but those will be fake aged powerlifting belts and if the customer finds out how they were aged, they might lose value.

I’m pretty sure this is one of the best business ideas I had.

Nicholas Ritchey

Great idea!

Only problem is, several years ago I went to a gym that 20+ year old leather bodybuilder belts with the skinny waist and I ended up breaking not 1, but 2 of them doing cleans! (thank goodness it wasn’t my dad’s old belt!)

I think my single pin powerlifting belt will still be around in 20 years… but it’ll probably be priceless to me by that time since its sentimental value keeps going up.

Maybe you could commission a high school gym teacher and have kids do everything in them with some BS excuse like, “it’s for safety” and go on to profit ^_^

Hey! Wanna be partners? You had a great idea! We’ll hire gym teachers and S&C coaches everywhere, they’ll comission the kids and we’ll collect the belts.

So, about your destruction of skinny BB belts… Mmm… we need a theory here. Maybe it’s because of their training, their sweat doesn’t work the same way as ours as far as leather conservation goes. Please don’t tell any BB I said that.

You see the pic at the right side of the article? That’s my 6 yr old belt. I got 3 or 4 PL belts plus 2 bench-press only belts. I only use this old one. I don’t even let people borrow this belt – not even in competitions. It is priceless! And we have a monogamous relationship, that’s what I mentioned in the article, doesn’t work commercially… 🙂

Nicholas Ritchey

I think the Different Sweat Theory could gain momentum 😉

Your points on having several belts but a monogamous relationship with just one prompts another research idea…

If you’re familiar with Gottman’s Love Lab (95% chance of predicting divorce with just 5 minutes of observing a married couple)… I wonder if we could do something with trainers and their belts. Maybe find a correlate like 95% of people without their own belts won’t get any stronger… or those with their own belts are 10x more likely to gain mass/lose weight if they try…